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About the Video Clip

The Sex Machine is an episode of the series Human Contraptions (10 × 5 mins) produced in 2002.

Academy Award winning animator Bruce Petty takes a satirical look at the “contraptions” that shape our lives. Education, sex, finance, globalism, art, media, medicine, law, government and even the brain are transformed by Petty into evolving machines. Beginning with a simple concept, he takes us on an anarchic journey through history as each apparatus builds to its complex contemporary form. In the wry, ironic style that is his hallmark, Petty reveals these to be contraptions of a very human kind – imperfect, sometimes unpredictable and always subject to change. A witty, provocative and entertaining series, narrated by Andrew Denton.

A Film Australia National Interest Program. Produced with the assistance of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Background Information

Moving on from a basic one-celled duplication device, the most successful reproductive machine hasproved to be the two-human, semiautomatic, chromosome exchanger. It’s simple and neither operator requires previous experience, but steering the flying, passion-driven, bonding module is far more difficult. From foreplay to feminism, romance to religion, Bruce Petty considers various attempts to get the sex contraption running hot.

Classroom Activities

Petty sex uses the language of computers and manufacturing in his sex contraption.

What reasons do you think he has for using this language?

Use the internet to look up in vitro fertilisation (IVF), sperm and egg donors. What intrusions has technology made into relationships between men and women? You may also want to consider the internet, mobile technology and other devices.

The cartoon uses imagery and symbolism to represent issues relating to how sex and gender have been perceived in western cultures over time. Petty borrows from a variety of sources. Discuss the images chosen as well as Petty’s cartoon styles:

art works reproduced in the cartoon- for example, a print of flapper and an oil painting from a much ealier era.

depiction of religion.

depiction of men and women’s roles in contemporary society- for example, consider men represented as obsessed with sports and power and women as “maternal” machines.

depiction of how sex is viewed in other cultures.

Discuss Petty’s style of animation. Is it effective in conveying his meaning?

Petty sees the sex contraption as having a number of relationships rather than just one:

How does Petty see the relationship between men and women in the contraption? Does his contraption see it as a changing relationship? If so, in what ways?

What role does Petty see other ‘bodies’ as having in the relationship between men and women?

How does Petty see the role of the Media in the contraption? Can you give examples from your viewing or knowledge of the Media to illustrate Petty’s point.

Draw, build or otherwise create your own relationship human contraption (if you can’t draw, you might like to do this in the form of a diagram or “family tree”). Your contraption will need to show the interconnections that you think there are between the various ideas of gender, individuals and groups, ideas of sexual identity and control over bodies and minds. In your work you will need to include, amongst others, media, religion, technology, cultures, censorship and identity – both individual and cultural.